Historically, high speed rotors supported in magnetic bearings have been employed in applications such as energy storage flywheels, momentum transfer flywheels, pointing devices, and control moment gyroscopes. Typically, rotors in devices such as these are constructed of a relatively massive wheel with high inertia, such as a disk or cylinder, which is attached to a support shaft. The support shaft is driven by a motor, or motor-generator in the case of energy storage flywheels, and is supported by magnetic bearings. In normal operation, the rotor mass has different spin speeds which produces the energy storage, momentum transfer, pointing and control moment functions. Such high speed, magnetically suspended rotor systems are known per se. For example, see U.S. Ser. No. 09/248,520 filed Feb. 2, 1999, incorporated herein by reference.
Thus, this invention provides novel rotor-magnetic bearing control, especially linear parameter varying control systems for high speed rotors. An exemplary application comprising a large inertia energy storage/momentum mechanical flywheel rotor, a motor/generator, a set of magnetic bearings to support the flywheel rotor, a support shaft attached to the flywheel rotor, power amplifiers. It is therefore a primary objective of this invention is to provide improvements in the operation of high speed rotor-magnetic bearing systems using the linear parameter varying control system. The linear parameter varying control method optimizes rotor operation over the entire speed range of the flywheel plant supported on magnetic bearings. The advantages of the invention include the reduction of rotor vibration over the operating speed range of the rotor compared with previous control methods and minimization of coil currents to minimize rotating power losses in the flywheel rotor operational range.